Hey friends,

Why was the jack-o’-lantern afraid to cross the road?

He had no guts. 🎃

Thinking Too Hard 🤔

So we're still working through the theory that reading, writing, and self-reflecting are three integrated practices to keep our thinking and opinions sharp.

Self-reflecting is a wide-open space. What comes to mind when you read, 'self-reflecting'? Journaling is where I went, and I had two ideas: ye olde daily diaries that record everything that happened that day, or some sort of structured journaling, like bullet journaling or GTD. One felt overly tedious and personal, and the other is highly structured with techniques I've failed with over the years.

I think we make it harder than it needs to be. Our thinking, like our writing, is not a linear process. It's also a highly PERSONALIZED process, which makes it hard to prescribe to others, but I think self-reflecting needs a few things to be successful:

1. Space. This is Cleese's first prerequisite for creativity. It's much harder to reflect when distracted. You need some time to seal yourself off.
2. A record of thought. Some might be able to sit alone with only their thoughts, but I find I can reflect better if I write my ideas down. No structure, no system, just write thoughts down as they come in. For me, this takes the form of a paper notebook I carry everywhere. When a thought strikes me, I write it down.
3. Review and response. However your thinking manifests, go over it again. How does it relate to you now? Does it spark a new idea? Do you have more ideas to add? Were you just rambling about noodles? How will you respond? Write down some new thoughts and repeat.
4. No TODO's! The quickest way to flip your mindset from open to closed is to start writing what you need to accomplish. TODO's are transient and time-based; they quickly lose relevance. Write your TODO's down in a separate place. If you must record it, write it down in this other place and then return to reviewing and responding.
5. Don't be precious about it. Your thought record ought to be convenient and pleasurable to use, but not overly structured or complicated. You will fill it up and then throw it away. It is not a monument; it is a tool. Don't fall into the trap of layering systems and procedures that increase friction.

The content of this thinking can be whatever is relevant to you: personal relationships, understanding why you did something, an idea for something you want to make, a problem that you've been stuck on, whatever. I find this cycle of recording and reviewing works to refine your ideas and can lead you to interesting places.

Interesting Web Bits 🍜

Web Stuff

• Naming things is hard. Fortunately, they've put together a guide to help you over at Smashing Mag. Now if only they could help me name my terrible game ideas...
• There's more to passkeys than you think...
• I guess one way to deal with the surge of AI pull-requests is to build your own source control system.

Other Stuff

• Tiny Little Office is an fascinating, URL-powered, tiny office software suite.
• I don't know how WELL this works, but I like the projector-over-real-objects concept in The Lightbulb Computer. (Just don't turn the lights too bright, I guess...?)
• I too once feared people stealing my ideas. Academia is not a world I have a lot of insight into, but I've come to learn the idea is the easy part.

👽 Weird, 📺 Watch, and 🎮 Play

• 👽 Did you ever hear of the jumping Frenchmen from Maine?
• 👽 Bartosz is back with another fascinating interactive exploration, this time on sound
• 👽 Just how random are you? Apparently, I'm pretty random (but I already knew that).
• 📺 Bo has made a driver for an e-ink display that manages to reach 30 FPS
• 📺 Just in case you wanted an explanation for every US electrical outlet.
• 🎮 I MAY have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this virtual guitar.